The
European Union and its regulatory arm the European Commission have
had a pretty active antitrust record of late. First it
slapped Microsoft
with a pair of fines for a total of $1.4B USD. Then it
hit Intel
with a single fine of $1.45B USD. In both cases, one of the
chief accusations that the American tech firms were found guilty of
was price fixing -- allegedly using underhanded pricing techniques
such as offering a discount to retailers who refuse to carry
competitors products.

Now nine American, European, and Asian
DRAM producers have been slapped collectively with $420M
USD (€331M , £283.1M) in fines for allegedly engaging in
price fixing. The fine against Samsung, Hynix, Infineon, NEC,
Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Toshiba, Elpida and Nanya was announced
yesterday.

Of the manufacturers, Samsung received the biggest
fine -- $185.4M USD (€146M). Germany's Infineon was fined the
second most, ordered to pay $72.4M USD (€57M).

According to
the EU investigation, the companies engaged in a seek collusion,
fixing prices of DRAM between 1998 and 2002. A "network of
contacts" carried out the pricing scheme.

All companies
cooperated with the investigation, thus their total fines were
reduced 10 percent. One company -- Boise, ID-based Micron
Technology -- was implicated in the investigation, but cut a deal
providing information to EU investigators on the deals it and its
competitors cut almost a decade before.

Micron began to
provide the EU with information in 2002, but it took several years to
substantiate the claims and reach a decision on fines. EU's
Competition Commissioner, Joaquin Almunia comments on Micron's
cooperation, "By acknowledging their participation in a cartel
the companies have allowed the Commission to bring this long-running
investigation to a close and to free up resources to investigate
other suspected cartels."

EU law offers among the
strictest bans on business practices that inhibit competition of any
industrialized nation. Almunia says he expects the number of EU
filings to rise in the near future and the process be expedited.
He states, "As the procedure is applied to new cases it is
expected to speed up investigations significantly."

Samsung
has been fined
$90M USD by U.S. regulators for price fixing, previously.
The U.S. has aggressively pursued DRAM manufacturers, too, handing
out close to $1B USD in fines over the last decade. Some DRAM
executives have also served
jail time related to price fixing.

"I'd be pissed too, but you didn't have to go all Minority Report on his ass!" -- Jon Stewart on police raiding Gizmodo editor Jason Chen's home